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This is really a pacing question, but there's no tag for that:

The general concept is that the players are working in a team and need to be able to react to eachother's movement and observations as they happen(not being turn based) without the game having to be played at a real time pace.

This question and it's answers offer some insight: Turn-based strategy games where action happens in real-time? But I'd like to implement it so players can change their queued actions on the bases of realtime stimulus.

Right now my thought is to use an action queueing system in which the players can state a series of actions they intend to take and actions are played out simultaneously until one player runs out of queued actions or certain triggers offer a brief "change your queue" period. It seems like it would be clunky and leave players waiting a lot of the time.

Any bright ideas to make this possible while still enjoyable?

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The first mechanic this made me think of is from "The Last Night on Earth" which is a web-based zombie survivial game. Players have a set number of actions they can perform during a specific time period, which can be increased through items, in order to work together to survive the zombie attack. At midnight the servers update with the zombie attack and the next day you find out if you lived or died.

If the game is more competitive than cooperative, can have each action a player performs take time (ie: charging lazer beam) so that other players can react.

Alternately if you look at cooperative boardgames the turn order is not really the important part of the decision making process, most decisions for the turn are discussed prior to the first player going in order to have an organized effort. Turn order effects the decision but the decision is front loaded with that knowledge.

Hope this helps.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I see what you're saying about turn order, but I'm trying to make cooperation an important aspect of the game. I'd like the players to be able to act with a total failure of communication if they are not actively trying to coordinate, more like in reality. I will certainly look into "The Last Night on Earth," thanks. \$\endgroup\$
    – Rorrik
    Commented Jul 13, 2012 at 18:04
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You can give every turn a fixed time length, for example say 5 seconds, then every player has 5 seconds to react.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I was thinking something like this, but each time a "queue changing" event happens give 10 seconds or something before proceeding with the queued actions normally, and when a player doesn't add to his queue for a certain time, his character is assumed to do nothing. I guess players being able to add "do nothing: 5 minutes, to the queue might also be a good feature. \$\endgroup\$
    – Rorrik
    Commented Jul 13, 2012 at 18:18

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